Alexander Martinov

Aleksandr Samoilovich Pikker (12 December 1865-6 May 1935), better known as Alexander Martinov, was a leader of the Russian Mensheviks.

Biography
Aleksandr Samoilovich Pikker was born in 1865 in Pinsk, Russian Empire to a Jewish family; his father was a timber merchant. He entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University in 1884 and was exiled to Siberia in 1886 for taking part in a student protest, staying there for ten years. Pikker, using the alias of "Alexander Martinov", became a communist newspaper editor for the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, and he aligned with the Mensheviks against the radical Bolsheviks of Vladimir Lenin. From 1918 to 1922, he worked as a teacher in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union, and he worked for Comintern from 1924 until his death in 1935.